Burns opened the white gate - it was sagging a little on its
hinges -and walked up the moss-grown path between the rows of
liveoaks to the tall-columned portico of the still stately, if
somewhat timeworn and decayed, mansion among the shrubbery.
It was just at dusk, and far away somewhere a whippoorwill was
calling. It was the only sound on the quiet air.

The door was opened by an old negro servant, who hesitated
over his answer to the question put by this unknown person
looming up before him with his arm in a sling. Mrs. Elmore
was in, but she was not well and could not see any visitors
this evening.

"Yas, Sah, she is. But she done tole me she couldn't see
nobody herse'f. She tekkin' cah ob Miss Lucy."

Burns produced his card and made a persuasive request. The
old darky led the way to a long, nearly dark apartment, where
the scent of roses mingled with the peculiar odour of old
mahogany and ancient rugs and hangings. The servant lit a
tall, antique lamp with crystal pendants hanging from its
shade, the light from which fell upon a bowlful of crimson
roses so that they glowed richly. He left Burns, departing
with a shufing step and an air of grudging the strange
gentleman the occupancy of the room, although it was to be for
only so long as it would take to bring back word that neither
of the ladies would see him to-night.

Burns sat still for the space of two minutes then, as no
further sound could be heard in the quiet house, he became
restless. His pulses beat rather heavily and, to quiet them
or the sense of them, he got up and walked about, pausing at
one of the long French windows to gaze out into the dusky
labyrinth of a garden, where he could just make out paths
winding about among the bushes. The night was mild, and the
window stood ajar as if some one had lately come in.

Then he turned and saw her. She had almost reached him, but
he had not heard her, her footfall upon the old Turkey carpet
with its faded roses and lilies had been so light. She was in
white, and the light from the old lamp shone on her arms end
face and brought out the shadows of her hair and eyes. She
put out both hands - then quickly drew back one as her glance
fell upon the sling, and gave him her left, smiling. But he
drew the arm that had been broken out of its support and held
it out.

"Please take this hand, too," he said. "It will be its first
experience and, perhaps, it will put new life into it. It's
pretty limp yet."

She laid hers in it very gently, looking down at it as his
fingers closed slowly over hers.

"That's doing very well, I should think," she said. "It's
barely time for it to be independent yet, is it?"

"About time. I had something of a wrestle with Doctor Buller
to get him to leave the splints off. How warm and soft your
hand is. This one of mine has forgotten how the touch of
another hand feels."

"I'm sure you ought not to use it yet. Please put it back in
the sling." She drew her own hand gently away.

It occurred to him that while he had been absent from her he
had not been able to recall half her charm, and that if he had
he would never have been able to wait half so long before
pursuing her down into this Southern haunt of hers. He drew a
full, contented breath.

In the lamplight it seemed to him the rose cast a reflection
on her face which he had not observed at first.

"I'm so sorry Aunt Lucy isn't able to see you tonight," she
said - "unless she would consent go see you professionally.
She really ought "

He held up his hand "Not unless she is in serious straits,
please," he begged. "I've fled from patients, only to find
them all the way down on the train. I don't know what there
can be about me to suggest to a conductor that I'm the man
he's looking for to attend some emergency case, but he seems
to spot me. Only at the station before this did I get
released from the last of the series. Let me forget my
profession for a bit if I can, just now I'm only a man who's
come a long way to see you. Is it really you?"

He leaned forward, studying her intently. His head, with its
coppery thatch of heavy hair, showed powerful lines in the
lamplight; beneath his dark throws the hazel eyes glowed
black.

"It's certainly I," she answered lightly. "And being I, with
the mistress of the house prevented from showing you
hospitality, I must offer it. She begged me to make you
comfortable and to tell you she would see you in the morning.
You've had a long journey. You must want the comfort of a
room and hot water. I'll ring for Old Sam."

She crossed the room and pulled an old-fashioned bell-cord,
upon which a bell was heard to jangle far away. The old darky
reappeared.

"I should have gone to a hotel," Burns said, "if I could have
found one in the place."

"There is none. And if there had been Aunt Lucy would have
been much hurt to have you go there. Where did you leave your
bag?"

"At the station. I can stay only for a night and a day, so
it's a small one."

"I'll send Young Sam for it. Now let Sam take you to your
room, and in a few minutes I'll give you supper,"

"You want what you are to have, - some of Sue's delicious
Southern cookery." She smiled at him as he looked back at
her, following the old servant. "She's been in the family for
forty years and she loves to have company to appreciate her
dishes. Sam, you are to help Doctor Burns. He has had a
broken arm."

When Burns came down, fresh from a bath and comfortable with
clean linen, he smelled odours which made him realize that,
eager as he was for other things, he was human enough to be
intensely hungry with a healthy man's appetite. So he
surrendered himself to the fortunes that now befell him.

Old Sam conducted him to the dining-room, a quaintly
attractive apartment where candle-light illumined the bare
mahogany of the round table laid with a large square of linen
at his place and set with delicate ancient china and silver.
Ellen Lessing was already there in a high-backed chair
opposite the one set for him, a figure to which his eyes were
again drawn irresistibly and upon which they continued to rest
as he took his seat.

Sam disappeared toward the kitchen, and Burns spoke in a low
voice across the table.

"I feel as if I were in a dream," said he. "Forty-eight hours
ago I was rushing about, hundreds of miles from here, trying
to attend to the wants of a lot of people who seemed
determined not to let me get away. Now I'm down here in the
midst of all this quiet and peace, with you before me to look
at, and nobody to demand anything of me for at least
twenty-four hours. It's all too good to be true."

"It seems rather odd to me, too," she answered, letting her
eyes stray from his and rest upon the bowl of japonicas of a
glowing pink, which stood in the centre of the table. The
candle-light made little starry points in her dark eyes as she
looked at the rich-hued blooms. "The last person in the world
I was expecting to see to-night was you."

"I suppose I was as far from your thoughts as your
expectation," he suggested.

"How should I be thinking of a person who had not written to
me for so long I thought he had forgotten me?" she asked, and
then as he broke out into a delighted laugh at her expense she
grew as, pink as her flowers and seemed to welcome the return
of Sam bearing a trayful of Sue's good things to eat.

Fried chicken and sweet potatoes, beaten biscuit and fragrant
coffee, had a flavour all their own to Burns that night. He
ate as a hungry man should, yet never forgot his companion for
a moment or allowed her to imagine that he forgot her. And by
and by the meal was over and the two rose from the table.

"I must go and see that Auntie is comfortable for the night,
if you will excuse me for half an hour," said the person he
had come to see. "Will you wait in the drawing-room? I will
have Sam bring you some late magazines."

"I'll wait, and no magazines, thank you. I can fill the time
somehow," he answered. "But don't let it be more than the
half-hour, will you?"

He watched her until she disappeared from his sight at the
turn of the staircase landing, then went in to pace up and
down the long room, his left arm folded over his right, after
the fashion he had acquired since the right arm became
useless. After what seemed an interminable interval she came
back. He met her at the door.

"All done for the present. I must look in on Auntie by and
by, but I think she is going to sleep."

"May she sleep the sleep of the just! And there's nothing
more you feel it incumbent upon you to do for me? No more
sending me to my room, no more waiting upon me by Sam, no more
feeding me till my capacity is reached? Is there really no
notion in your mind as to how you can put off the coming
hour?"

His voice had its old, whimsical inflection, but there was a
deeper note in it, too. She parried him gently, yet not quite
so composedly as was her wont.

"Why should I want to put if off? Aren't we going to sit down
and have a delightful talk? I want to hear all about Bob and
Martha and all of them, and about your work since I saw you."

"You want to hear all about those things, do you? I had the
impression that we discussed them quite thoroughly while I was
at supper. Still, I can go over them all again if you insist.
It may take up another five minutes, and when one is fencing
for time, even five minutes counts."

It was his old way, with a vengeance. There was a saying of
Arthur Chester's current among his and Burns's friends that it
never was of any use to try to evade Red Pepper when once he
had begun to fire upon your defenses. With his eyes searching
you and his insolent tongue putting point blank questions to
you, you might as well capitulate first as last.

There being no conceivable answer to this thrust about fencing
for time, even for a woman experienced in replying skilfully
to men under all sorts of conditions, Ellen Lessing was forced
to look up or play the part of a shy girl. So she looked up,
lifting her head bravely. There really was nothing else to
do.

It was all in his face. He had not come all those hundreds of
miles to pay her an evening call, nor did he mean to be put
off longer. His eyes held hers: she could not withdraw them.

"It's odd," he said, speaking slowly, "how like a magnet
drawing a steel bar you've drawn me down here. Pull-pull-pull
an irresistible force. I wonder if the magnet feels the
attraction, too? Could it pull so hard if it didn't?"

There was a long minute during which neither stirred - it
might have been the counterpart of that minute, months back,
when they had first observed each other. Recognition it was,
perhaps, at the very first; there could be no question about
the recognition now - it went deep.

Suddenly he slipped his right arm out of the sling. Before
she could draw breath she was in the circle of his arms, but
he had not touched her.

"Am I wrong?" he was saying. "Has it pulled both ways from
the first?"

It must be as useless for the magnet to resist as for the bar.
And when they, have come within a certain distance of each
other -

If Red Pepper's left arm caught her in the stronger grasp, the
right did all, and more than all, that could have been
expected of it. It was his right arm which slowly drew her
hands up, one after the other, and indicated to them that
their place was; locked together, behind his neck.

An old garden in South Carolina is a place to lure the
Northerner out-of-doors. Before breakfast next morning Burns
was walking down the box-bordered paths, feasting his gaze and
his sense of fragrance on the clumps of blue and white
violets, the clusters of gay crocuses, the splendid spikes of
Roman hyacinths. But he did not fail to keep track of all
doorways in sight, and when she appeared at the open French
window of the drawing-room he was there in a trice, offering
her a bunch of purple violets and feasting his eyes upon her
morning freshness.

"I'm still dreaming, I think," said he when he had drawn her
back into the quiet room long enough to satisfy himself with
the active demonstration that possession means privilege, and
had himself fastened the violets in the front of her crisp
white morning dress. "Dreaming that I can stay down here in
this wonderful paradise with you and not go back to the
slave's life I lead."

"You would never be happy away from that slave's life long,
you know," she reminded him. "The rush of it is the joy of it
to you."

"How will it be to you? I shall be yours, you remember, till
Joe Tressler or any other ne'er-do-weel wants me, then I'm
his."

He looked steadily into her eyes, and his own took fire.
"Want to come back! I've waited a long time to find the woman
I could be sure I should always want to come back to. I
thought there would never be such a woman: not for an erratic
fellow like me . . . . But now I'm wondering how I shall ever
be able to stay away."